


Three facts about Seishirou

by Etrangere



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X/1999
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etrangere/pseuds/Etrangere





	Three facts about Seishirou

1.

Seishirou didn't remember when he realised his mother lived in a cage. It was a very pretty cage, of course, gilded and enamelled red with Camellia flowers. It was a cage nonetheless and Setsuka lived in it like a deadly, deceptively delicate doll, still and lovely until she was told to kill and did.

It was a simple, orderly life, even Seishirou could see the appeal in that, yet he also saw the restrains and wondered if they chafed, if Setsuka ever wanted anything from beyond the cage, from over the horizon.

He asked her once. Setsuka tilted her head birdlike, eyes deep and blank when she said, "I have you."

He'd shuddered. One day, he will be the keeper of the Sakura grave, and this is not the kind of keeper he wants to be. He will not be bound to the tree as his mother. He will play his own games.

2.

Seishirou started smoking in order to heckle his mother. Everything was always neat, perfect, graceful at the Sakurazuka's home. Fragile, almost, as if mere breathing could shatter it. Smoke was breath - stale, toxic breath which Seishirou relished.

He watched Setsuka's eyes narrow each time she caught him smoking and he smiled lazily at her with the confidence of younger challengers.

Soon, he thought. He was fourteen year old.

3.

He kept a bonsai in his apartment. It amused him, like a _mise-en-abyme_. I keep a tree that keeps me who keeps a tree. It was torture and balance and perfection all in one tiny vegetal experiment.

Later, he would think of Subaru as his own human-shaped bonsai tree. Little cuts and deft touch to make him grow and keeps him narrow just the way he wanted him. It was the tension he enjoyed, the way Subaru struggled in his ties, ensnaring himself further in. Not still, yet lovely; fragile, yet enduring; poisoned, yet pure still – the perfect symmetry between order and disorder.


End file.
